Demon Theory

by Stephen Graham Jones

  † Most recent update: Hostel (2005), which trades central Texas for the war-black heart of Serbia, but keeps the leather aprons. Last update before that: Wolf Creek (2005), which moves the horror to the land of Howling III: The Marsupials (1987), or, more specific to the end Wolf Creek flirts with, A Cry in the Dark (1988). Most recent update before that: Alexandra Aja’s High Tension (2003), which swaps the trademark chainsaw for a cut-off saw, the Texas hill country for the French hill country, and puts Philippe Nahon of 2002’s IrreversibleA in the Gunnar Hansen role, driving the truck from 2001’s Jeepers Creepers.

  ‡ The same marketing trick used by The Amityville Horror, The Blair Witch Project, Wolf Creek, and, to a certain extent, The Exorcism of Emily RoseB (2005), a trick Capturing the Friedmans (2003) would also use, though in a way more reminiscent of 1932’s Freaks, where the tables of fiction are turned somewhat, such that, while you know the story’s not a wholly accurate representation,C the “draw” is nevertheless that the characters/actors are “real.”

  AWhere High Tension earned what Ebert would call the hardest R for violence the MPAA has ever given—in most places, it was NC-17i —Irreversible, instead of trying to please the ratings boards as Tobe Hooper had tried with Texas Chainsaw Massacre (as Scorcese had tried with Taxi Driver, etc.), instead took a cue from Plan 9 from Outer Space and embraced its “extreme violence,” billing itself as the most walked-out-of movie of the year (Plan 9 is often billed [hailed] as “The Worst Movie Ever Made”).

  B Very loosely based on Felicitas D. Goodman’sii nonfiction work The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel (Doubleday, 1981).

  C A statement 1976’s Snuff was legally forced to include as disclaimer, which is of course the best marketing possible.iii To bolster this “outrage,” the producers paid people to picket theaters showing Snuff—i.e., they put their sandwich boards up on sticks.iv

  i This is the “re-rating” Ebert and Russ Meyer’s only collaboration, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), would pull. Originally, of course, in spite of all the camp—or, because of all the breasts, and the killings—it was rated X.

  ii Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1835 short story “Young Goodman Brown,” like The Exorcism of Emily Rose, was also particularly concerned with admitting evidence of the supernatural into courts of law. Specifically, those around Salem.

  iii Except, perhaps, for the free publicity the Los Angeles Times gave 1980’s Maniac: it refused even to print its show times,§ prompting Maniac’s distributor to promote Maniac as “the film the Los Angeles Times refuses to advertise.”

  iv Much as the UK distributor Go Video, in an effort to push their 1980 Cannibal Holocaustε (see n 120C), wrote in, “complaining” about the indecency and offensive nature of its own film, which ultimately resulted in the “video nasties” list▽—a ban on importing tasteless slashers that would use Driller Killer (1979) as its poster child and include such staples as The Evil Dead (1981), The Toolbox Murders (1978), The Funhouse (1981), etc.

  §A “kindness” they might have extended to Lucio Fulci’s New York Ripper two years later, had it had a theatrical opening in America.

  ε Along the same lines as Snuff, Cannibal Holocaust also wound up in court, where it had to prove that the violence it contained was special effects, not documentary footage.

  ▽ Which, contrary to popular belief, didn’t include A Clockwork Orange, which had been pulled from UK shelves, as it was inspiring “droogs,” mayhem, etc.

  † presaged, perhaps, by Ed Chigliak in the pilot for Northern Exposure, “reciting” all these terms for the new doctor, then citing television as his source (specifically, St. Elsewhere, which was just two years dead then).

  † And the dreaded flashback montage, to catch anybody up, should this be their entry into the series (or, in Halloween II’s case, to catch everybody up [it had been four years since Halloween]).

  † If the post-Halloween “slasher boom” can be said to arc from 1980’s Friday the 13th to 1987’s somewhat-parodic (i.e., self-aware) Return to Horror High (1987),A then Terminator, at 1984, would be stepping into the bloodbath right at the pinnacle,B both of genre development and audience interest.

  ‡ For that matter, neither is Jaws, which came along not even a whole year after Black Christmas and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and, with them, laid down a lot of the conventions for the slasher (i.e., teens “sinning” and dying; an essentially “faceless” killer, whose eyes we look through sometimes; authorities not listening; the necessary balance of gore and nudity [i.e., sex and violence]; friends getting picked off one by one; distinctive theme music; a big one-on-one showdown at the end, after a long and desperate chase; etc.).

  A You could also of course bookend the slasher-boom with, say, Halloween (1978) and either Popcorn or Silence of the Lambs (1991), but Terminator would still fall in the middlei—or, rather, at the height.

  B As, unwittingly perhaps, would Footloose and Sixteen Candles and Beverly Hills Cop and Karate Kid and Ghostbusters and This Is Spinal Tap and Splash and The Neverending Story and Gremlins and Romancing the Stone and Police Academy and The Last Starfighter and Purple Rain and Revenge of the Nerdsii and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and, particularly wittingly, A Nightmare on Elm Street.

  i As it does even if you start with Silent Night, Bloody Night or Black Christmas (1974) and “stop,” as you have to, at Scream.

  ii Not to be confused with Massacre at Central High (1976), though Massacre is of course a “revenge of the nerds,” albeit a bit more violent.

  † Sam Neill’s first legitimate horror role since 1981 (Omen III: The Final Conflict), and his last until 1997 (Event Horizon and Snow White: A Tale of Terror). Since Event Horizon, though—perhaps the best space-horror since AlienA slashed its way into the American psyche—he hasn’t returned.

  A Event Horizon’s central conceit, of course—the dead wife returning—was already as old as Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 space-horror Solaris (based on the 1968 Stanislaw Lem novel, and not to be confused with the Grendel’s space-destination in 2001’s Jason X), and would be used to good effect again both in The Mothman Prophecies and in the shorter, American Solaris (both 2002, with the first based on the 1976 John Keel novel).

  †In spite of the fact that he died in 1985, Orson Welles (not Leonard Nimoy) provided the Unicron voice for 1986’s The Transformers: The Movie,A much as Marlon Brando will be reprising his 1978 Jor-El role in Superman Returns (2006, i.e., two years after he died).

  A One alternate title of which was Matrix Forever, a title likely drawn from the line still in the movie, “One day an autobot shall rise from our ranks and use the power of the matrix to light our darkest hour.”i

  i This prophesied “one” (or “One,” “Neo,” etc.) is of course the pattern for The Matrix and plays a large part in The City of Lost Children (1995) as well.§

  § Of note too is that, as Lost Children draws it title from the 1964 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’s Island of Misfit Toys, so does The Matrix, in Zion, have an isolated band of humans who no longer “fit” the world and need some “one” to lead them back.

  † Presumably, as there’s a sequel, LIE.

  † Often criticized, now that it’s over,A for it’s Oz/Alice/Scrooge/“it was all a dream” ending,B a story dynamicC used in the cineplex as recently as Stay (2005) and, in cinema in general, at least as far back as Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924), both of which are, except for the sugar fairies and the mice, essentially The Nutcracker (1816).D

  A Unlike the 1986 Dallas season finale “Blast from the Past” and the following season premiere “Return to Camelot (part 1),” which drew a lot of criticism at the time for the surprise development that the entire previous season had been a dream.i

  B The “acceptable” version of this type of narrative reversal is of course to be found in any good caper flick, where the carpet is pulled out from under the audience’s feet in the very last frames. David Mamet’s Heist (2001) is perhaps the best example of this, as, unlike with
Ocean’s 11 (1960, 2001), The Italian Job (1969, 2003), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968, 1999), or any of the rest, and in spite of the giveaway title, we aren’t at all certain the movie is even in the caper genre.

  C The “clinical” term for this is “retroactive continuity,”ii i.e., a “reveal” at the end that makes us instantaneously reinterpret the whole movie, resulting in a type of hermeneutic “cascade effect” (for examples, see The Parallax View [1974], Arlington Road [1999], Traces of Red [1992], The Usual Suspects [1995], The Game [1997; not to be confused with 1985’s Gotcha!, either], The Sixth Sense [1999] and The Village [2004], Presumed Innocent [1990], Basic [2003], or, from “straight” horror,iii April Fool’s Day, Return to Horror High, Sleepaway Camp, Dead End [2003], etc.).iv

  D By 1816, of course, this “trick” ending was already old,v as established by Shakespeare having utilized it in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream (first performed in the mid-1590s, first printed in 1600, on-screen as recently as 1999), The Tempest, a bit in King Lear, etc.; in The Taming of the Shrew, even, his source play had the whole experience recast at the end, as a dream.

  i A development precipitated by Patrick Duffy’s equally surprising return to the show.

  ii A term coined by comic book writer Roy Thomas in the letters column of his April 1983 All Star Squadron (i.e., #20), and, in 1988, as it’s a term needed so often in comic book story arcs (which inhere doppelgängers, parallel realities, “holodecks,” telepathy, and writer changes), shortened to the more manageable “retcon.”

  iii While 1996’s Rumplestiltskin’s tag would seem to suggest horror’s affinity for dreams—“It’s a scream come true”—perhaps Mia Farrow said it even better, in Rosemary’s Baby: “This is not a dream. This is really happening.”

  iv Each of which are of course “good” examples. For examples that aren’t so good, see any story that relies upon a little deus ex machina§ to extricate itself from either its hopeless complications or its overriding need for a happy ending. In comedy, however, these endings are often acceptable, as they’re all part of the game there (Shakespeare’s comedies rely heavily on deus ex machina developments, though in a very tongue-in-cheek manner, which of course requires complicity on the audience’s part).

  v Dating at least back to the thirteenth century, with Piers Ploughman, but perhaps even all the way to The Epic of Gilgameshε (written in cuneiform; alternate title: He Who Saw the Deepa), a story of fantastic, dreamlike feats, beasts, gods, and travels through the underworld, all of which, in the eleventh tablet, comes down to Gilgamesh having slept longer than he meant to (as established by the aging of the loaves of bread his host has been placing by him each day he slept; from the various states of the bread, he can tell how long he’s slept [seven days]).

  § Literally, “God out of the machine,” i.e., in a Greek play, Athena or some other Olympian being lowered down in a “chariot” to tidy up all the story problems the story hasn’t been able to tie up itself—a convention One Night at McCool’s (2001) takes about two-tenths of a second to turn inside out, Bay of Blood–style.

  εLoosely based on Bilgames, the fifth ruler of the first dynasty of Uruk. Sumeria, 2750 BCE.

  a Not to be confused with James Cameron’s 1989 The Abyss, where Ed Harris is “he who saw the deep.” Three and a half miles of it. Reportedly, not unlike Gilgamesh, he suffered a physical and emotional breakdown on set.

  † Where Hill Street Blues meets The Odd Couple (1981 and 1968, respectively).

  † Debuted three years before Omega Man and four years after The Last Man on Earth, each screen adaptationsA of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend. Two lines from Legend: “The world’s gone mad, he thought. The dead walk around and IB think nothing of it … They walk around on restless feet, circling each other like wolves, never looking at each other once, having hungry eyes only for the house and their prey inside the house.” The influence Romero cites first for Night, though, is Carnival of Souls (tagline: “Is there death after life?”).

  ‡ Most recent installment: Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Hellbound, Flesh-Eating Subhumanoid Zombified Living Dead, Part 3 (2005), affectionally known simply as NOTDOTDOTSOTBOTROTROTTOTAOTEMHFSZLD #3, and, surprisingly, shot for under a hundred dollars.C

  †† Re-animator (1985) has had two sequels as well (1990 and 2003).

  A As Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (1965) wasn’t.

  B Vincent Price in 1954, Charlton Heston in 1971.

  C i.e., like the Mystery Science Theater 3000i–influenced Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (2002), it’s an old movie with new dialogue (etc.) dubbed in.

  i b. 1988, adapted to the big screen eight years later, and itself possibly drawing off all the fun Joe Dante had in 1976’s Hollywood Boulevard,§ which stitches together pieces of old movies and is itself “stitched” into 1981’s “feminist manifesto” Slumber Party Massacre (it’s the late movie Valerie’s watching on her black and white television).

  § Filmed over ten days in October 1975, the same month a New York detective would introduce the term “slasher movie” into the American lexicon (see n 12†), a synchronization only of interest when Hollywood Boulevard’s newspaper headline is taken into account: “Slasher Strikes in Hollywood.”

  † Specifically, August 17, some twenty-seven days before the Exorcist-spoof Repossessed, starring Prom NightA alum Leslie Nielsen.

  ‡ While The Darkness was the working title for The Others (2001; shot by candlelight), and in spite of the fact that the directors of each have Spanish names (Balagueró and Amenábar, respectively), The Others and The Darkness are no more related than The Haunting of Hill House and The House on Haunted Hill (see n 29A).

  A which itself opened a scant sixteen days after Airplane!

  † Or, giallo, Italian both for “yellow” and for those sixties and seventies (Italian) movies that included a black-gloved, “faceless” killer and lots and lots of blood. Too, “yellow” here is incidental,A only refers to a content those movies shared with pulp crime novels of the sixties (Italy), which, either to make the bookshelf easier to navigate or to “brand” readers in public, all came with yellow covers (sometimes called “yellow jackets”).

  A “Blue movie,i” however, is a more intentional term: as early as 1864, “blue” has been used in Americaii to refer to content either risqué or otherwise obscene. More local to the cinema, though, in the early days of burlesque, the “blue” filter would often be applied to the stage lights to signify that the dancer was about to lose some important piece of clothing, or engage in something more suggestive than what’s already been going on. This perhaps lends some credence to the claim that Marlene Dietrich’s 1930 debut, Blue Angel, is where the term originated. In it, she’s a risqué stage performer …

  i In China, these are called “yellow movies.”

  ii As has “stag,” a slightly antiquated (i.e., red deer) term meant simply to refer to the males of the species, exclusive of females. So, to “go stag” is to only go out with other guys for the night (and of course “stag” trundles “horny” in with it). Similarly, a stag movie or stag film is a movie made specifically for men (i.e., a blue or yellow movie,§ depending on where on the globe you are), and a stag party is just a party with no does at it—often, in common usage, a bachelor party.ε An even older usage is “stag line”: all the Willard Hewittsδ standing up against the wall at the high school dance, afraid to ask any of the girls out onto the floor …

  §No real relation to I Am Curious Yellow (1967) or I Am Curious Blue (1968), though they were seized at the American border, as “illegal pornographic imports.”

  ε€ An early Tom Hanks outing (1984), fourteen years before the “next” big bachelor-party movie, Very Bad Things, where the “stags” have to dismember and hide a dead prostitute.

  δ Chris Penn in Footloose (1984).

  † Assuming there is a “right,” of course—i.e.
, that “the truth is out there.”

  †Unlike “FE,” which, in Black Christmas, Margot Kidder (not yet Lois Lane) tells a hapless desk sergeant is for “fellatio,” setting him up for the lone running joke in the movie.A

  ‡A range that doesn’t include Robert Englund’s 1989 directorial debut, 976-EVIL (i.e., 976-3845), the prefix of course suggesting a pay-by-the-minute number.

  ††A role originally written for Harrison Ford.

  ‡‡No relation to The Simpsons’s Asst. Principal Skinner, based of course on Paul Gleason’s principal in The Breakfast Club (1985), a role he revisited three years later, for Die Hard (where he was again second in charge: Deputy Chief Robinson).

  A Clarke’s other 1974 horror movie, Dead of Night, a.k.a. Deathdreami—his update of WW Jacob’s 1901 short story “The Monkey’s Paw,” itself an update of Poe’s 1839 “The Fall of the House of Usher”—also has a single, word-based joke (“nuptials”) that somehow manages to get funnier each time we hear it.

  i Mixing Vietnam and the horror genre sixteen years before Jacob’s Ladder.

  †This was eighteen years after the Marlboro ManA campaign was started (by a stock photo of a cowboy holding a cigarette), eight years after he (the Marlboro Man) became Marlboro’s sole spokesman.

  ‡ An Italian-to-Indian shuffle Armand Assante would attempt as well, in 1979’s Prophecy: The Monster Movie (a prescient subtitle, perhaps, intended to avoid confusion with 1995’s The Prophecy, starring the ever-haunting Christopher Walken).

  A Played convincingly, opposite Mickey Rourke, by Don Johnson—still not shaving—in 1991’s Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (by 2003’s Once upon a Time in Mexico, however, Rourke would have the cowboy hat, and Johnson, not unlike Philip Michael Thomas,i would be strangely absent …).